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Supreme Sauce

A creamy sauce made from a white roux, chicken stock, onion, clove, bay leaf, butter, cream, egg yolk, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Supreme Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Make a white roux by melting the butter and mixing in the flour.

  2. Dilute the roux with 3 quarts of chicken stock.

  3. Add the onion, clove, and bay leaf.

  4. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Skim the surface.

Finish and strain

  1. Stir in the fresh butter, cream, egg yolk, and lemon juice, and mix well.

  2. Strain through a fine cloth.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted with flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Forms the roux with butter, thickening the stock into a sauce.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing most of its body and flavor.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, adding richness and smoothness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk and cream off the heat. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it gets too hot, leaving the sauce grainy. Adding it gently and keeping the sauce from boiling helps it stay smooth and thick.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, chicken, onion, cream, egg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, onion, cream, egg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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